Caked in Mud
The story goes something like this: Many years ago, in a small village in present-day Thailand, invaders approached. Knowing that their little town was on the verge of pillage, the villagers moved to protect the most valuable asset they had—a golden statue of the Buddha, too large to hide, too heavy to move, and too precious to lose.
As quickly and thoroughly as they could, villagers began to cover the Buddha in mud, so that it no longer shone, no longer stood out—in the hope that the invaders would simply pass it by.
And pass it by they did, as they ransacked the rest of the village. As the people of the village recovered and rebuilt, they left the mud on the statue.
Initially, perhaps, their instinct was to protect it, just in case the invaders returned. Over time, though, they forgot. They were busy, after all, recovering. There were crops to grow, dwellings to rebuild, families and friends to serve. They forgot the invaders. Forgot the rush to hide the Buddha. Forgot the gold underneath. The Buddha stood, generation after generation, caked in mud.
There’s more to this story, and I’ll get to it next time. But I want to pause here, for now, to think about defense mechanisms. And hiding. And all the things we do to protect ourselves from judgment or discomfort or pain. After a while, those temporary measures become so permanent that we forget what we were defending ourselves from in the first place. We forget that parts of ourselves are caked in mud.
It’s worth sitting with that, thinking about our patterns and our defenses and whether or not they still serve us. Maybe they do. If so, great. But maybe they don’t. And if not, what then?